[Congressional Record Volume 141, Number 161 (Wednesday, October 18, 1995)]
[Senate]
[Pages S15278-S15282]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
TRIBUTE TO THOMAS J. DODD
Mr. LIEBERMAN. Mr. President, I want to speak with my colleagues
today about a remarkable and really historic event that occurred in my
State of Connecticut this past Sunday, October 15, when the University
of Connecticut dedicated the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, associated
with the University of Connecticut library. It is a center named,
obviously, for the great former Senator from the State of Connecticut,
father of my colleague and dear friend, the current Senator Chris Dodd.
It was a spectacular day, a beautiful fall day in Connecticut, but
obviously it was more than the weather that distinguished the day.
What happened really was a fitting tribute, that will go on through
the years and decades ahead, to Senator Tom Dodd and the remarkable
record of achievement that he built here in the U.S. Senate where he
served from 1958 to 1970 and in the years before then. The events began
with a dedication at the library site itself and then proceeded to the
Gampel Pavilion
[[Page S 15279]]
where it looked to me like 8,000 or 9,000 people packed in to hear the
President of the United States, President Clinton, deliver the first in
a lecture series that will emanate from the Thomas Dodd Research
Center, in this case specifically focused on the Nuremberg trials, 50
years after, because Senator Tom Dodd was a prosecutor there.
Mr. President, Tom Dodd, as President Clinton said, spent his life in
the service of his country. He trained as a lawyer, served as an FBI
agent, then as a lawyer for the U.S. Government. He was, throughout his
career, a great fighter for freedom, for human rights. And it is to the
study of human rights that this research center will be committed.
Senator Dodd fought the tyranny of racism as an attorney prosecuting
civil rights cases in the 1930's, which was a long time before most
other Americans thought about the idea of civil rights.
And throughout his time here in the Senate, and before in the House,
he was a great fighter against the tyranny of communism, one of the
great, principal, fervent anti-Communists of the cold war period who
put us as a nation on a course to understand that the cold war was not,
as some historical revisionists would have us believe, just a kind of
tug of war between two great powers--the United States and Russia--but
a conflict of ideas, a continuation of the struggle between good and
evil, between freedom and tyranny. That is, in its way, the history of
our species on this Earth.
Senator Tom Dodd understood that the battle against communism, the
cold war, was part of that struggle of good against evil.
His passion for justice, his hatred of oppression, his understanding
that human rights began with the vision that every individual is sacred
because God created that individual, his understanding that we had to
strive to establish the rule of law to protect human rights and to
promote justice was expressed magnificently, brilliantly in his work as
an executive trial counsel at the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal after
the war.
A film was shown of some of Tom Dodd's appearances at the Nuremberg
trial. It was riveting. He was brilliant and compelling, and in that
extraordinary human historic experience, coming out of the devastation
and lawlessness of the Holocaust, established the principle of justice
through law.
Senator Chris Dodd, who spoke that day, reminded us that one of the
remarkable achievements of the Nuremberg trial was not just those who
were guilty, who were convicted and severely punished, but that three
people were actually acquitted at Nuremberg and that, in its way, is a
testament to the rule of law and justice as well.
A beautiful building, 50,000 square feet, a repository of historic
papers, Senator Dodd's and others--a living legacy that will go on from
generation to generation bringing scholars there to study, to write and
to be reminded of the centerpiece of the career of Senator Tom Dodd,
which was the struggle for human rights and justice through law and the
need to continue to fight that battle.
Mr. President, the day on Sunday was a day in which we dedicated a
building, but it was also a day in which I think Connecticut was struck
and riveted by what was happening to bring the building about. It was
truly an expression of devotion of a son to his father, an expression
of the love of Chris Dodd and his brothers and sisters for their father
and their commitment to honor his memory. As I had the opportunity to
say on Sunday in Connecticut, as beautiful a fulfillment as I have ever
seen of the Biblical commandment, honor one's father and mother, and
the Dodd family did it with dignity and with purpose befitting their
father, Tom Dodd, on Sunday in Connecticut.
But, of course, the truly significant way and the ongoing way in
which my colleague from Connecticut and dear friend, Chris Dodd, honors
the memory of his father is by the extraordinary quality of his service
in this body by his personal fight for human rights throughout the
world and at home, and particularly at home for the rights of children,
understanding and reminding each of us, as Senator Chris Dodd has so
often on this floor, that a child who is without adequate food, without
adequate shelter, without adequate parentage, without decent health
care, without safety and protection from crime and abuse, suffers in
that child's way, as much as people who are forced to live under
tyranny, and in that sense, is deprived of human rights as well.
It struck me, and I know my colleagues on the floor, knowing and
loving Senator Chris Dodd as I do, will share the thought that I had on
Sunday, which was, as we thought about Nuremberg and we thought about
the Second World War and the films were there of the Holocaust and the
genocide, that our colleague and friend, Senator Chris Dodd, in his
service, in his life, is the diametric opposite of the evils that were
portrayed and lived and suffered through in the Second World War;
really a person without bias, a person of great warmth and compassion,
a person of openness to all and a person who really in his life carries
on the legacy that his father left.
It was a spectacular day which had great meaning for the Dodd family,
which truly honored the memory of Senator Thomas Dodd, which the
President graced with a magnificent speech, talking as the President
did about the record of Senator Tom Dodd, but also bringing it to bear
on the acts of genocide that have occurred in the former Yugoslavia, on
the importance of the war crimes tribunal that is now going on in The
Hague directed to the war crimes that have been committed in the former
Yugoslavia. And, finally, the President expressed support for the idea
of a permanent court of international justice, a permanent court
operating perhaps through the United Nations, emanating out of the
United Nations, which could stand as witness and deterrent, as Senator
Dodd did at Nuremberg, to prosecute those who violate accepted rules of
international justice and fairness.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record
the text of President Clinton's remarks at the University of
Connecticut dedication of the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center on Sunday,
as well as several articles from the Connecticut press, the Hartford
Courant in particular, about the life and service of Senator Tom Dodd
and what it means to each of us today.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:
Transcript of President Clinton's Remarks at Dedication of Thomas J.
Dodd Research Center, October 15, 1995
Thank you very much, President Hartley. Governor Rowland,
Senator Lieberman, members of Congress, and distinguished
United States senators and former senators who have come
today; Chairman Rome, members of the Diplomatic Corps; to all
of you who have done anything to make this great day come to
pass; to my friend and former colleague, Governor O'Neill,
and most of all, to Senator Dodd. Ambassador Dodd, and the
Dodd family: I am delighted to be here.
I have so many thoughts now. I can't mentioning one--since
President Hartley mentioned the day we had your magnificent
women's basketball team there, we also had the UCLA men's
team there. You may not remember who UCLA defeated for the
national championship--(laughter)--but I do remember that
UCONN defeated the University of Tennessee. And that made my
life with Al Gore much more bearable. (Laughter.) So I was
doubly pleased when UCONN won the national championship.
(Applause.)
I also did not know until it was stated here at the outset
of this ceremony that no sitting President had the privilege
of coming to the University of Connecticut before, but they
don't know what they missed. I'm glad to be the first, and I
know I won't be the last. (Applause.)
I also want to pay a special public tribute to the Dodd
family for their work on this enterprise, and for their
devotion to each other and the memory of Senator Thomas Dodd.
If, as so many of us believe, this country rests in the end
upon its devotion to freedom and liberty and democracy, and
upon the strength of its families, you could hardly find a
better example than the Dodd family, not only for their
devotion to liberty and democracy, but also for their
devotion to family and to the memory of Senator Tom Dodd. It
has deeply moved all of us, and we thank you for your
example. (Applause.)
* * * * *
____
[From the Hartford (CT) Courant, Oct. 12, 1995]
From Father to Son, Dodd Name Passed Along in Senate
(By David Lightman)
Washington.--It was not that Chris Dodd didn't love running
the Stamford campaign for his father's 1970 U.S. Senate bid.
In fact, the task fit him. He was 26 and full of energy and
ideas for his first formal brush
[[Page S 15280]]
with elective politics. He loved people, loved the political arena,
loved everything about it.
But the campaign was sputtering, and even a rookie could
understand why. Three years earlier, Sen. Thomas Dodd, D-
Conn., had become only the seventh person in history to be
censured by the U.S. Senate. And now the censure--for
improper use of campaign funds--hung like an anvil around the
neck of the candidate.
Of course, what everyone, including young Dodd, could see
coming, happened. And when the Election Day mauling was over,
he drove back to the family's Old Lyme home, crushed. He
thought he had let down the father he respected and loved so
much.
But Daddy, as Chris Dodd called his father, was not
scowling. ``He poured a glass of Dewar's scotch,'' recalled
Chris Dodd, ``and thanked me for putting in the time.''
His father's grace in defeat--rather than his triumphs at
the top--helped convince Chris Dodd that politics was an
honorable profession. And the son, now Sen. Christopher J.
Dodd, D-Conn., has dedicated at least part of his own career
to ensuring that his father is remembered as an honorable
politician.
``Sometimes, I think almost everything Chris Dodd does down
here is meant to vindicate his father,'' said Sen. Daniel K.
Inouye, D-Hawaii, who served in the Senate with both Dodds.
He has taken up some of the issues his father held dear,
such as foreign policy and children's welfare.
He has kept his father's memory alive in the Senate
chambers. Chris Dodd sits behind his father's desk and keeps
his father's barrel-back, wood-and-leather chair in his
office. A huge illuminated portrait of Thomas Dodd looks down
on visitors to the office's conference room.
And he has worked quietly to rehabilitate the Dodd name.
The very presence of Chris Dodd in the U.S. Senate is daily
testimony to the success of that effort. And Sunday's
dedication of the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center at the
University of Connecticut is his monument.
The Dodd family helped raise over $1 million for programs
at the center, which will house the senior Dodd's political
papers, along with other archival material.
The four-day conference that coincides with the center's
dedication will focus on the legacy of the Nuremberg trials.
Thomas Dodd's year as a Nuremberg prosecutor was ``the
seminal event in my father's professional life,'' Chris Dodd
said.
``I had given thought over the years to what would be a
fitting memorial,'' the younger Dodd said. ``We'd thought of
a road or a bridge or a park, but I didn't like the idea of
people driving over his name.
``This is a research center at the flagship university in
our state, just a few short miles from where he was raised.
There's a lot of symbolism to it. My father would have loved
this,'' he said.
shielded from censure
Chris Dodd said he has been able to maintain his love of
politics, while many in his family have not, because he was
not a witness to his father's humiliation. After graduating
from Providence College in 1966, the younger Dodd joined the
Peace Corps and went to the Dominican Republic.
He was there when his father became the first caught by an
ethical system that was undergoing profound changes in the
1960s. Stung by charges that Secretary of the Senate Bobby
Baker used his office to help his business, the Senate set up
an Ethics Committee in 1964.
The Dodd case would be its first mission. In February 1966,
a month after columnists Drew Pearson and Jack Anderson began
writing articles accusing Dodd of using campaign money for
personal expenses, Dodd asked the new committee to look into
the complaints.
The committee held hearings in the summer of 1966 and
continued them the next year. Dodd testified that money
raised at testimonial dinners were ``to be spent at the
discretion of the recipient.'' In response to a complaint
that he helped a Chicago public relations representative gain
favor with the West German government, Dodd said he was
simply an errand boy for the executive.
The committee recommended he be censured on two counts--
using campaign money for personal expenses and billing trips
to both the Senate and to private organizations.
The Senate would not censure him on the second charge; it
agreed to strike it, 51-45. But it did vote 92-5 to censure
him on the first charge, with only Sens. Abraham A. Ribicoff,
D-Conn.; John Tower, R-Texas; Russell Long, D-La; Strom
Thurmond, R-S.C.; and Dodd himself opposing the resolution.
It was a stunning setback for a politician who just three
years earlier was being seriously considered by President
Johnson for the vice presidency.
Chris Dodd received newspaper clippings, sent by family and
friends, about his father's ordeal, but he did not live
through it directly. He did not have to endure the daily
batterings from Pearson and Anderson, or read about the march
of Connecticut figures to the Ethics Committee in 1967 to
testify about his father, or hear his father's May 15, 1967,
radio speech to the people of Connecticut in which he called
his pending censure ``a strange coming together of hateful
and vengeful interests.''
``They may have been trying to shield me,'' Chris Dodd said
of his family. ``I was living in a vacuum.''
By the time he returned to the United States on Christmas
Eve 1968, U.S. politics involved other topics.
Despite the Senate's resounding verdict, Thomas Dodd
continued to serve, maintaining his seniority and
chairmanship of the juvenvile delinquency subcommittee and
vice chairmanship of the internal security subcommittee. In
1968, he saw Congress pass the gun control legislation he had
championed for years, albelt a watered-down version of what
he had sought.
He lost his seat in 1970, largely because of the censure.
Lowell P. Weicker, Jr., then a U.S. representative from
southwestern Connecticut, won with 41 percent of the vote.
Democrat Joseph Duffey got 34 percent, and Dodd was third
with 24.5 percent.
When Thomas Dodd died in May 1971, four months after
leaving the Senate, the rehabilitation of the Dodd name began
in earnest.
Senators offered tributes on the floor. Sen. James Allen,
D-Ala., recalled how, ``He fought unceasingly against crime,
juvenile delinquency and drug addiction.'' Sen. James
Buckley, Conservative-N.Y., called him ``an eminent analyst
of Cold War strategy.''
In February 1972, Ribicoff asked the Senate to give its
unanimous consent to printing colleagues' eulogies in a
special book, a memorial to Thomas Dodd. That book is
available today in the U.S. Senate library.
Winning as a Dodd
But restoration of the Dodd name has come more from his
son's political success than his colleagues' flowery words.
Thomas Dodd did not urge his children to become involved in
politics--``We were never asked to pose for pictures,''
recalled Chris Dodd--but the son could not help notice all
the excitement his father's work was generating.
Chris Dodd was a teenager when his father was elected to
the Senate in 1958. ``He was working all the time, and at
night he'd most likely be at some function or another.''
Chris Dodd said, ``But when he'd come to the house, you'd be
aware of his arrival. Dogs would bark, people would get
excited. He may not have been home for dinner at 5:30, but
bonds were forged in different ways.''
The younger Dodd liked the idea of going into politics, but
it was not a burning ambition. ``I knew enough to know that
was not the kind of ambition you should have, that becoming a
member of Congress is something you don't always control,''
he said.
Chris Dodd did not make the classic young man's political
moves. He moved to North Stonington, hardly a hotbed of
Democratic activity. He joined a law firm that did not
encourage people to run for office. And he lived in a
congressional district represented by Robert H. Steele Jr., a
Republican who at the time looked like he could hold the seat
until the 21st century.
Still, Chris Dodd ran for the House of Representatives in
1974, an election held three months after President Nixon
resigned in the wake of the Watergate scandal. Even though it
was a good time for Democrats, ``A lot of people told me I
could never get elected with the Dodd name,'' Chris Dodd
recalled. He did, of course, ``and then people told me it was
because of the Dodd name,'' he said.
Inouye viewed the son as a man on a mission.
Chris Dodd's style, his choice of issues, his way of
dealing with people is all meant to convey the idea that his
father was a person of honor and Chris is here to remind you
of that, said Inouye and others.
Though he was only 36 when he joined the Senate in 1981, he
quickly befrinded some of his father's colleagues, including
Inouye and Sens. Ernest F. Hollings, D-S.C.; Robert C. Byrd,
D-W.Va; and Edward M. Kennedy, D-Mass.
And he didn't forget one of his father's few supporters
during the censure vote. Chris Dodd was one of only three
Democratic senators to back John Tower's controversial and
unsuccessful nomination as secretary of defense in 1989.
``Their presence on the Senate floor is very similar,''
said Inouye. ``When I look at Chris Dodd and close my eyes, I
can imagine Tom Dodd speaking.''
Kennedy also notices a similarity in how the two men put
together legislation. Chris Dodd makes a habit of visiting
Connecticut high schools to talk to youngsters, particularly
about the problems of weapons in schools. Then he returns to
Washington and uses anecdotes to help him push for a bill.
Thomas Dodd would do the same kind of thing. ``He'd get in
his car and, go around Maryland and Virginia and go to gun
shops,'' Kennedy recalled. ``He would find out what was
happening and then translate that into legislation.
``When Tom Dodd or Chris Dodd wanted something, they were
bulldogs,'' Kennedy said.
There are, however, important differences between the two.
One of them is their relationship with the Kennedys.
Chris Dodd is viewed as Kennedy's best friend in the
Senate. Thomas Dodd, on the other hand, was one of the few
prominent New England officeholders to endorse then-Senate
Majority Leader Lyndon B. Johnson over then-Sen. John F.
Kennedy in the 1960 battle for the Democratic presidential
nomination.
There are personality differences as well. ``Tom Dodd was
more reserved; Chris is more of a glad-hander,'' said
Thurmond, who was a
[[Page S 15281]]
Democrat when Tom Dodd arrived in the Senate.
Hollings put it more bluntly. ``Christopher has a much more
engaging personality,'' he said.
And Chris Dodd is much more of an insider than Thomas Dodd
ever was. In 1963, the elder Dodd blasted Senate Majority
Leader Mike Mansfield, D-Mont., on the Senate floor.
Chris Dodd, on the other hand, competed for the job of
Senate Democratic leader last year and lost, even after a
late start, by only one vote. A month later, he became
President Clinton's hand-picked choice as Democratic National
Committee general chairman.
liking the linkage
The father and son have taken up some of the same issues.
Chris Dodd likes to draw a line between his father's work in
the 1930s with the National Youth Administration, a
Depression-era agency that helped children from poor families
get education and employment training, and his own work
today.
Chris Dodd chaired the Senate's subcommittee on children,
families, drugs and alcoholism until Republicans won the
Senate in 1994. He remains the Senate's leading voice on
children's issues, most recently brokering a compromise to
the welfare reform bill that will mean $8 billion in extra
money for child-care programs during the next five years.
``I can see him moving bills like that,'' said Chris Dodd.
``I'd like to think he'd be more supportive than not of what
I do, very proud.''
In foreign policy, Chris Dodd was able to see finished
something his father had helped start.
In 1950, Thomas Dodd, then a member of a special American
Bar Association committee, had urged members of the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee to approve a treaty establishing
penalties for genocide.
Yet the Senate for years refused to ratify the treaty, some
senators fearing the U.S. sovereignty would be compromised.
The son battled hard for his father's cause. In 1984, Chris
Dodd, who like his father served on the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee, quoted on the Senate floor his father's
words from two decades earlier: ``For me, the genocide
convention has a special personal meaning because as
executive trial counsel at Nuremberg I had spread before me,
in nightmarish detail, the whole incredible story of Nazi
barbarism.''
Two years later, as the Senate debated the treaty again,
Sen. William Proxmire, D-Wis., recalled the senior Dodd's
commitment. ``Tom Dodd, the father of Sen. Chris Dodd,
contributed a special zeal to this effort,'' he said. ``It
was his opinion that had it [the treaty] been in existence
when Hitler first came to power the tragic events of his
regime might have been prevented.''
Finally, in 1986, as the Cold War wound down, the Senate
approved the treaty.
Father and son, however, were not always in sync,
particularly on foreign policy.
Thomas Dodd was a relentless anti-Communist from his
Nuremberg days. Though representatives from the Soviet Union
were part of the tribunal, his dealings with them made him
think they were capable of the same kinds of horrors as the
Nazis.
They are ``probably doing this same sort of thing behind
the Iron Curtain now,'' he said in his 1950 testimony,
``Russia in its plan, as I see it, wishes to influence people
all over the world.''
While many Democrats were urging the United States to pull
troops out of Vietnam in the late 1960s, Thomas Dodd remained
staunchly behind the war effort.
By contrast, his son, though no rabid anti-war activist,
came to oppose the Vietnam War in 1968, and served in the
U.S. Army Reserve to avoid being sent to Vietnam.
In the Senate, Chris Dodd opposed the Reagan
administration's efforts to provide military aid to ``freedom
fighters'' trying to unseat the democratically elected and
socialist government of Nicaragua. He pushed hard for
economic aid to address fundamental economic problems in the
Caribbean and Central America.
But the son warned that the differences between father and
son should not be overstated. They are of two different eras,
but share the same values and thoughts, he said.
``I have a lot of affection and admiration for my father,''
said Chris Dodd. ``I like the tradition. I like the
linkage.''
____
[From the Hartford Courant, Oct. 8, 1995]
Tom Dodd's Letters Open New Window Into History
(By Mark Pazniokas)
A half-century ago, amid the rubble of a vanquished
Germany, the victorious Allies put Nazi leaders on trial for
crimes against peace and humanity.
The Reich's unspeakable atrocities were laid bare in a
dozen trials and hundreds of convictions. But the Nuremberg
trials had an even more noble aspiration: to make
international law a force for peace.
Beginning today, The Courant will explore the meaning of
the trials and their ambiguous legacy in a four-part series.
Next week, the University of Connecticut will commemorate the
50th anniversary by dedicating the Thomas J. Dodd Research
Center and holding a conference on human rights and the rule
of law.
Horror fills the yellowed letter, written long ago in a
bombed out hotel. It is dated Aug. 14, 1945, the day after a
wide-eyed Thomas J. Dodd arrived in Nuremberg, Germany, to
prosecute the Nazis.
Three months after V-E Day, the stench of death still hung
heavy in the summer air. An estimated 20,000 dead lay
entombed in the rubble of the old city, where legions had
rallied for Hitler before the war.
Half the population of 400,000 fled before the Americans
took the city in April. Many of those who stayed now slept in
cellars, emerging each morning like mice to forage in the
dusty ruins.
``Grace, my dearest one,'' Dodd wrote to his wife, safe at
home in Connecticut with their five children, the youngest
being the 14-month-old Christopher. ``Here I am in the dead
city of Nuremberg.''
So began an unbroken stream of letters that Tom Dodd, then
a 38-year-old government lawyer abroad for the first time,
would write daily from Nuremberg until sailing home in
October 1946.
The collection remained unseen outside the Dodd family
until last month, when Sen. Christopher J. Dodd granted The
Courant access for stories marking the 50th anniversary of
the first Nuremberg war-crimes trial.
Nuremberg was the real ``trial of the century,'' a yearlong
dissection of how the Nazis murdered millions and pillaged a
continent.
Twenty-one men stood trial before an unprecedented
International Military Tribunal, which the four Allied powers
created to mete out justice and compile an incontrovertible
record of Nazi outrages. Architects of the tribunal also had
a higher hope: to set an international standard for judging
war crimes.
Tom Dodd returned home a hero from Nuremberg, poised for a
political career that would make him a congressman, a senator
and a national figure opposed to communism, which he viewed
as the moral equivalent of Nazism.
But the letters to his wife show a man who was at a
crossroads at Nuremberg, bedeviled by doubts about his career
and even his continued participation in what he knew was a
historic trial.
Hopes of entering politics seemed to be slipping away. He
told his wife in one pessimistic letter that the future
belonged to the men who spent the war in uniform. Dodd had
been a federal prosecutor during the war.
Dodd's children long had viewed the letters as his private
notes to their mother. She supported their father through his
many triumphs and, in 1967, his censure by the Senate for
misusing campaign funds. The Dodds died within 20 months of
each other: Tom in May 1971, months after losing his Senate
seat; Grace in January 1973.
``Many of them,'' Chris Dodd said recently of his father's
Nuremberg letters, ``are what I would consider to be love
letters.''
They are full of tender references to ``that day in St.
Paul.'' Tom Dodd and Grace Murphy married May 19, 1934, in
St. Paul, Minn., where he was assigned as an FBI agent.
Most are written by hand in a flowing script, in ink when
available, in pencil when necessary. They are conversations
between the sometimes-crusty prosecutor and his ``dearest
Grace.''
``I am not conscious of proper grammatical construction or
of word choice or any formality,'' he told Grace. ``I am on
the sofa and I am talking to you and I'll be darned if I will
pick my words like a parson preparing a sermon.''
from norwich to london
Tom and Grace Dodd made their goodbyes before dawn at Union
Station in Washington, D.C., on July 27, 1946. Dodd had been
recruited from the U.S. attorney general's staff for the
United Nations War Crimes Commission.
``You made a memorable picture for me as I gazed out the
taxicab window until the dimness of the dawn light blotted
your loveliness out,'' Dodd wrote her from London, his first
stop in Europe.
He one day would become a foreign policy expert, relied
upon by Lyndon B. Johnson, but in 1945 he was small-town
Connecticut. He was born in Norwich and lived in Lebanon, a
part of the state that had more cows than people.
His letter from London is enthusiastic travelogue, full of
details about his flight aboard a military transport that
hopscotched from Washington to Newfoundland to Prestwick,
Scotland, where he caught another flight to London.
Trans-Atlantic air travel was still a novelty, and Dodd
stayed up most of the night chatting with a crewman, who
regaled him with tales of planes lost without a trace in the
North Atlantic.
At first light, Dodd wrote gratefully, ``The sun came up
beautifully about 4:30 a.m. London time.''
Dodd had graduated from Yale Law School in 1933, an Irish-
Catholic at a blue-blooded institution. He was president of
the Yale Democratic Club and organizer of ``the Flying
Wedge,'' a cadre that passionately defended Franklin D.
Roosevelt's New Deal.
He spent a year as an FBI agent, chasing John Dillinger
through the Midwest; served for a time as director of the
National Youth Administration in Connecticut; then tried
civil rights cases for the Justice Department. During the
war, he prosecuted spies and profiteers.
He cut an impressive figure. His hair, prematurely going
gray, was brushed straight back. He had piercing eyes and
thick, dark eyebrows, a ringing speaking voice and the same
sarcastic wit later shown by Christopher, the son who would
follow him onto the national political stage.
[[Page S 15282]]
In London, Dodd felt humbled by the war-weary populace.
``They stared at the cab from eyes that I could not meet,
attired in clothing that made me wince,'' Dodd wrote. ``I
really feel ashamed when these people stare--for they
recognize an American by the quality of his clothing.''
Of course, he had seen nothing yet. In a few months, Dodd
would be numb to the horror of war and complain about being
bored by the confession of a man who murdered 1\1/2\ million
people at Auschwitz.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator's time has expired.
Mr. LIEBERMAN. I thank the Chair, and I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader is recognized.
____________________